Image: Joseph Kennedy, 29 November 2011 (with permission) [velociraptorize].Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/400s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400 I encourage you to purchase images from the photographers who freely share their beautiful work with us.

Question: This handsome North American mystery bird is very special for several reasons. Can you identify its taxonomic family and species and tell me what makes it so special?

Response: This is an adult Harris's sparrow, Zonotrichia querula. This bird is a member of the Emberizidae, the New World sparrows and Old World buntings. These birds share striking resemblances with finches, and were often classified as such. The emberizids the classic "little brown jobs" or LBJs; small, brown or grey in colour, ground-feeding seed-eating songbirds that typically are talented singers. If you are a careful observer, you will soon discover that most emberizids have distinctive head plumage patterns.

The black area on Harris's sparrow's face and breast is a sign of maturity and status, and females prefer males with large black "badges".

To my eye, Harris's sparrows are unique, but some people do confuse them with house sparrows, Passer domesticus (no doubt due to the presence of their black badges), but house sparrows have either a black or pale yellowish bill, a noticeably shorter tail, rufous upperparts (instead of grey), and no stripes on its plain greyish breast.

Lapland longspurs, Calcarius lapponicus, in winter plumage can be confused with immature Harris's sparrows, but the longspur has a much shorter tail, white outer tail feathers that they flash when startled, rufous upperparts (instead of grey) and a white stripe above the eye.

Female Harris's sparrows build the nest; a grass-lined open cup that is either on, or close to, the ground, hidden in vegetation. Harris's Sparrows breed along the edges of boreal forest and tundra in north-central Canada and winters in the Great Plains region of the central United States. This species is special because it is the only endemic breeding bird in all of Canada.

Here's a video of a Harris's Sparrow feeding alongside adult and juvenile white-throated sparrows, Z. albicollis, and house sparrows, Passer domesticus, in Grand Forks, North Dakota (filmed on 12 October 2009):